How Havergal College Increases their Online Presence with FlippingBook

Havergal College is an independent school for girls from Kindergarten to Grade 12. The school, founded in 1894 and located in Toronto, Canada, provides students with a strong Liberal Arts education and promotes self-confidence, leadership, and teamwork.

“It’s a lot more cost-effective to share direct links to publications than print them, and it’s better for the environment, too.”- Leah Piltz, Digital Marketing & Social Media Associate at Havergal College

Challenge

Havergal College produces numerous publications a year for the members of their community, including Course Calendars, Student Handbook, and faculty and staff materials. In the past, most of those publications were available in print for teachers and students to pick up in school. However, Havergal College’s alumnae and school magazines were distributed to readers in Canada and abroad, which involved high printing and shipping costs. Plus, the school wasn’t able to modify the publications after printing, so they needed a better solution.

“We felt that the postage costs were quite high, which was one of the reasons that we wanted to look for alternative publishing tools — to save money on our magazines.”

The school’s other goal was to reach and engage with a wider audience online. If they could provide their publications in a digital format, more students and alumnae would be able to access them on the website, on social media, and via email, which would eliminate the need for printed copies. Additionally, they could reach people who did not receive the publications by mail, including extended family members, friends of the school, and prospective parents and students.

“We wanted to build more online presence, and we found that doing an online publication would really work for us.”

Solution

The Communications and Marketing Department at Havergal College looked at alternatives to printing and realized that sending a link to online documents could be a suitable solution for them. Fortunately, FlippingBook could help with both growing their online presence and cutting printing costs. Plus, the tool could make their documents responsive: they’d look good on mobile and desktops.

FlippingBook increased the online presence of Havergal College. With the software, the school could publish their prospectuses and magazines on their website and email direct links to the documents. Sharing their online publications on social media helped Havergal College reach a larger audience as well. The school appreciated the new online format of their documents, and while they didn’t reject printing entirely, they managed to cut back.

“FlippingBook definitely allowed us to print less. For example, we offer an online edition of our school magazine the Torch to our international alumnae, so we’re saving on high shipping costs. Now people living outside of Canada can access it online.”

An additional bonus was regular product updates. With them, the team could always use the most advanced version of the software, so they created the most up-to-date publications.

“It’s really good how FlippingBook always sends out software updates. That’s really great to have. People love how it works; we never get any complaints. They say that our publications look professional and are intuitive to use.”

Results

Havergal College achieves their goals with FlippingBook and eagerly expands their use of the tool. Just recently, their student newspaper team collaborated with the Communications and Marketing Department to have some of their issues displayed online in the flipbook format. Overall, the school creates 5–10 different publications a year: Course Calendars, Family Handbook, an alumnae magazine, and other documents.

“If the opportunity comes up, like with the student newspaper, then we definitely look to expand. We’re glad we have FlippingBook, so we can offer people this digital publishing option. Our documents look very polished, and people appreciate that.”

Havergal College has managed to reduce printing significantly, but some of their publications are available both in print and online, like the school’s biannual magazine The Torch. Having the magazine online allows the school to reach a wider audience, as it can be shared on social media and their website.

“Before finding an online solution, we used to mail approximately 6,200 copies of the Torch magazine per issue. Now we send approximately 5,500, and we’re also getting over 6,000 page views per issue on FlippingBook!”